Chapter 11: Kellan's Rent

Kellan's POV

I woke at five with Leonie's hair across my mouth and her hand flat on my chest.

The storm had gone, and the pond outside the window was the color of pewter.

I lay still and made a list.

I had two things to tell her, and I had not told her either one.

The first was small.

For two years, a trust that carried my mother's name had paid the monthly rent on a dry cleaner in New Haven.

My mother had died of pancreatic cancer at fifty-six, eleven weeks after anyone found it.

I read that a man named Wheelock was trying to build a test to find it sooner.

I wrote a check and asked the lawyers never to put my name on it.

The second was worse.

The night before the lawn, her sister had come to my house, uninvited, and stood in my front hall.

She had said she needed ten minutes about Leonie.

I had said no.

Then she had said, "Your mother liked white lilies, and the hospital never let you bring them."

It was true.

I had never told anyone.

I had listened to Daphne Hartwell for four more minutes, because I needed to know how a woman I had met once knew that.

She had said Leonie was a liar, a climber, a girl who got herself chosen.

She had said I would be miserable.

She had said it flatly, as a fact.

I walked her to the door and shut it.

I told myself I had not believed a word.

The truth was that I had gone to the lawn the next day expecting a schemer.

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